All have one thing in common
The essence of the right to gun ownership is to ensure that the citizenry maintains the ability to arm itself with weaponry equivalent to what soldiers of their era are issued. This is to ensure that a tyrannical government or invading army can never overawe citizens with superior technology.
If the right to military equivalent arms is weakened or removed, legislators are promising a guarantee that forever and all time resistance to a usurping, tyrannical government or invading army will never be necessary for any future generation of Americans.
As a final note, it must be pointed out that the incidents being used as an excuse to restrict the right to arms have one thing in common. Without exception those criminal acts occurred in locations where the right to arms was already nullified by law or corporate policy. The places that most harshly restrict exercising our Second Amendment rights also have the most violent crime. It is not a coincidence.
Thomas Huebner
Colorado Springs
Abstinence or grape jelly
Wow! Our state Democrat representatives passed a new sex education bill sponsored by (Oh wouldn’t she love her name mentioned). In the curriculum approved by the bill it advises children they can use maple syrup, as well as grape jelly as a lubricant. So good to know. Oh and abstinence doesn’t work, so our children need to learn about syrup and grape jelly.
Abstinence works every time it is tried. My only question to this Democratic knuckle head is: The grape jelly — is it Welch’s or Smucker’s?
Timothy Lee Goodwin
Colorado Springs
The differences between laws
This letter is in response to Larimore Nicholl’s, published in The Gazette on
Feb. 23.
In Nicholl’s letter, he notes the success Japan had in reducing the number of gun-related murders to seven after enacting harsh gun laws. He concludes the same result would occur in the U.S. if we were to enact similar legislation.
This is a fallacious conclusion. Japan does not protect the rights of the arrested like the United States. An individual arrested in Japan can be isolated from society for months, is given no access to a lawyer, and in most cases, confesses to a crime after prolonged, harsh interrogations. Japan does not prohibit cruel and unusual punishment like the United States.
This matters in the gun-control debate because it is wrong to use examples of other countries’ gun-law successes and believe the same results would occur in the United States.
If so, why not look at Switzerland? Fully automatic weapons are legal and allowed in private residences, unlike in the U.S. In 2010, Switzerland had all of 40 gun-related homicides, but much like Japan, Switzerland is very different than the U.S.
We cannot use other country’s gun-control successes or failures without also understanding the differences in their laws. I believe the Japanese success can be attributed to the fact their police are allowed to beat confessions out of the accused. If the U.S. enacted similar Draconian measures, the crime rate would surely fall. Fortunately, we have the Constitution which protects the rights of everyone, even the accused.
Jeff McGuirk
Colorado Springs
Ban those dangerous asteroids
Since the state legislature is having such great success in fast-tracking new laws, I would like to suggest legislation which I feel has been overlooked. On Feb. 15, a 150foot. asteroid passed within 17,200 miles of Earth. If this asteroid had struck Colorado, the devastation would have been absolute. Since there are nearly 1,400 more potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA’s) which could threaten as, I urge the legislature to immediately pass a law limiting how close they may come to Colorado.
As a start, I would suggest 100,000 or 150,000 miles would be a reasonable limit. Common sense dictates these asteroids shouldn’t be allowed to pass close to Colorado without restrictions. I don’t know why these objects even need to exist, but I’m willing to compromise by only restricting how close they may come to us. If this law saves even one life, it is worth it. Even if it doesn’t, it will limit the carnage. No reasonable person could object to this restriction. If we act quickly, Colorado can take the lead nationally on asteroid legislation, and our law could become the model for needed national legislation. As further evidenced by the undetected asteroid over Russia the same day, we cannot wait any longer. We must pass this legislation now if we want to feel safe.
Robert Nelson
Colorado Springs
Send these prisoners home
There has been lots of talk of immigration reform and deficit reduction lately. Yet, little emphasis has been placed on criminal aliens currently being housed in federal prisons at U.S. taxpayers’ expense. There is an international treaty in place which allows many of these criminal aliens to complete their sentences in their home countries, at those countries’ expense. However, the U.S. Department of Justice frequently denies these transfers for trivial reasons, even when the home countries consent to the transfer.
Given the massive overcrowding and deterioration of the federal prison system today, there is no legitimate reason to continue keeping these offenders housed here when the home countries are willing to assume responsibility for their care. The prisoners who are eligible for this program will be deported at the end of their sentences anyway.
Julian Salvador
Colorado Springs